[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: You refer to the book as 'Plainview'
> but I do not think that was the correct name. There were two studies,
> about fifteen years apart, and the place they referenced was Muncie,
> IN, a small town in Indiana and also the home of Ball State University.
> (But they did not mention Ball State by name [it would have given away
> too many clues] and only wrote in general, statistical terms for the
> most part.) The two-part study was intended as a sociological effort
> discussing the 'typical' American small town. The town was intended
> to remain anonymous, and did so for about twenty years following the
> second part of the study in 1954. PAT]
The library catalog has them as:
"Plainview USA" "Plainview, 15 years later"
I believe they picked a small town in Missouri; this town was rather small and poor and I don't think any college was there. I'm pretty sure there was a separate but similar study for Muncie, Indiana called "Middleton".